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| Monday Sep 26, 2022 | |
| As the heat moves through the Western region this week, it will be quite different than a couple of weeks ago when the California grid was at the brink of its supply output. A couple of reasons behind the comfort of the CAISO and utilities in the Pacific Northwest is the simple fact that the overnight low temperatures are acting as a natural air conditioner with highs in the upper 50’s/low 60’s in many key regions. The second element is tied to the fact that there is enough renewable output on display with the battery fleet leading the charge while wind/solar are supportive. The final piece is the simple fact that the Pacific Northwest Water Year is still paying off as entities still find a way for providing flexibility to the hourly profile. Figure 1 | CAISO ... » read more | |
| Friday Sep 23, 2022 | |
| We’ve discussed this concept in blogs before, but one approach that we frequently take to thinking about prices in ERCOT is to break them down into “buckets” based on implied heat rate. We look at the ratio of power price to gas price in any given interval, and decide whether that interval was experiencing scarcity, oversupply, or neither. This blog from a little over a month ago explored the “normal” hours, and discussed how even though prices in ERCOT this past summer have been volatile and spiky, the normal hours continue to behave, well, normally. This time, we’re looking at the oversupply hours. We’ll use North Hub real time prices, and we’ll define an “oversupplied” hour as one where the implied heat rate is less ... » read more | |
| Thursday Sep 22, 2022 | |
| Over the past week SPP appears to have hit an inflection point when it comes to seasonal renewable energy. The last two years the month of September has seen a point at which the rate of oversupply of renewable energy becomes much more common and the rate of wind curtailments increases. SPP reached this point in the last week, which can be seen in the figure below, which plots a running total for annual SPP wind curtailments each year going back to 2019. The yellow (2021) and purple (2020) lines for the past two years both suddenly increased in slope partway through the month of September and the brown line for this year shows an even more dramatic kink as the MW have been curtailed freely over the past few days. Figure 1 | Annual Cumulative SPP Wind Curtailments Part ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Sep 21, 2022 | |
| Power prices at the end of the summer in Alberta have been reaching record levels. In the last several years, power prices have averaged under $100/MWh, and if you go back to the mid-2010s, prices were much more likely to be under $30/MWh. This summer is a completely different story with daily average prices peaking over $750/MWh in the last week as AESO struggles to meet demand without prices skyrocketing for at least a few hours each day. With average prices in August and September in 2021 over $200/MWh and over $250/MWh in 2022, we explored the changes in the AESO grid and discussed whether the trend will continue in upcoming summers in an article titled ‘Alberta Supply Struggles to Meet Load Growth’. Read on for a sneak peek. Figure 1 | Alberta Daily Average Power Prices ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Sep 20, 2022 | |
| Last week we discussed the ongoing issue of the EIA East storage inventory deficit heading into the last weeks of the injection season. This has been an ongoing problem for most of the summer exacerbated by the record high power burns throughout the Midwest and East as well as the lack of production growth in the Marcellus Basin. Currently the EIA East storage inventory is at 661 BCF which is a 67 BCF deficit to last year and a 98 BCF below the five year average. The problem is that there are few avenues to closing the inventory issue and it is likely the EIA East will enter into the heating season at a five year low facing record breaking power generation demand. Figure 1 | EIA East Storage Inventory for 2018 - 2022 One of the levers the East balancing can pull to ... » read more | |
| Monday Sep 19, 2022 | |
| Demand in California hit record levels this September. EnergyGPS covered this heat event extensively, including a report released right after the event on the role batteries played. The strong showing from batteries was the saving grace for CAISO during the evening ramp. With their grid heavily relying on intermittent renewables, CAISO depends on batteries to meet demand during busy hours when the sun has set. As the renewable goals of the state intensify at the same time load expands with hotter weather and structural growth, the importance of the growing battery fleet is only increasing. Read on for a sneak peak of 'CAISO Battery Performance During High Price Event(s)’, where we looked at how batteries performed during the high-stakes test of the heat event and discussed the ... » read more | |
| Friday Sep 16, 2022 | |
| Game On! Long-time readers of this blog may have noticed that I haven’t written about the annual Aluminum Man competition in a couple of years. Aluminum Man is a decathlon of leisure sports held once per year somewhere in Oregon. Yours truly, Tim Belden, is the Aluminum Man Commissioner (yes, a capital “C”). Our last competition was in June 2019. COVID kept us off the playing field in 2020 and 2021. It felt great to get back in the game again. The only energy-related content in this blog will be the names and scores of four people from “the biz” who participated in the competition. I’ll give a rundown of the games and results. This year’s event was held in Portland on September 10th. Let’s start with the basics. The event is called ... » read more | |
| Thursday Sep 15, 2022 | |
| SPP is in for a wild ride over the next few days as the wind generation numbers are substantially higher than what the grid has seen over the past couple of months. To give you a perspective of the magnitude of change we are talking about, the first couple of weeks of September 2022 have averaged roughly 4.3 GW across the 24-hour daily strip whereas the current level just topped double digits with a pathway to just over 19.0 GWa for the same 24-hour period. Such a move cannot be compensated by an uptick in the overall demand thus we are looking at lower net load numbers as we move through the weekend and into early next week. Figure 1 | SPP Net Load Daily Averages – Year on Year Comparison The graph above illustrates the change that is occurring as the lines represent ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Sep 14, 2022 | |
| The phrase ‘Wild, Wild West’ conjures up images of gunslinging cowboys and bustling saloons, but in this case, ‘Wild, Wild West’ refers to the events in the natural gas and power markets covered in our monthly report on the western side of the continent. The background is the same with climate change creating arid conditions where tumble weeds blow across dried up lake beds, but our cast of characters is a little different. Rather than a ragtag team of men on horses, we looked at the CAISO, the Desert Southwest, the Pacific Northwest and more. In this blog, we’ll be focusing on the wild (Pacific North)west, but check out the monthly, titled ‘Wild, Wild West’, to read about the rest of the characters. Figure 1 | Wild, Wild West The Pacific ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Sep 13, 2022 | |
| There is only seven weeks left to the end of the injection season providing little time for many storage caverns across the Lower 48 to make up ground on their year on year deficit. While most of the attention is devoted to the South Central caverns, particularly the salt storage inventory, the issue is also present in the Midwest and East regions. According to the last EIA inventory report the combined Midwest and East storage levels are 122 BCF behind last year and a combined .7 TCF from capacity. But breaking down the individual caverns in each are tells a better story on where the deficits are going prior to the start of winter. Looking at DTI and TCO caverns, which are the largest cavern systems in the East region, suggests the deficits will continue to expand. Figure 1 | ... » read more | |